


CSI: Atlantis

by TMar



Category: CSI: Miami, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 12:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17080178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TMar/pseuds/TMar
Summary: When the Miami crime scene investigators find a very weird looking victim of a shooting, little do they know they have stepped into a military operation involving... well, aliens.





	CSI: Atlantis

**Author's Note:**

> I started this many years ago when Stargate Atlantis was still on the air (so was CSI Miami) - I *think* it was 2008 or something. While uploading my oeuvre I found it on my hard drive. There was only one scene missing, so I finished it. I think it could have been longer and a bit more exciting, but this will have to do. And to think I only started writing it because Joe Flanigan had a guest part in CSI Miami's second season!

CSI: Atlantis

Ryan was first on the scene. The case seemed about as simple as any other case investigated by Miami's CSI unit: unknown male, facial deformities, shot with what appeared to be an automatic weapon, lying in a secluded area of an otherwise pretty park. Boot prints everywhere, shell casings, some kid's video game, candy wrappers. The usual. So he began collecting the evidence just as Alexx arrived to get the body.

"Hey, Ryan. I usually beat you to a crime scene."

"Yeah, but this is close to my place so I came right here."

He bent down and took pictures as Alexx turned the guy and took his temperature. Strange guy. Looked like a member of an ageing punk band, complete with odd facial tattoos and plastic surgery scars. Ryan looked up at Alexx as she frowned, putting down the thermometer and getting another one.

"Problem?"

"I dunno. I think this one's broken." She tried again, but got the same result. "Look at this."

Ryan looked. "50 degrees. Not in this heat. Did you hit the liver?"

Alexx just shrugged. "I'll bag and tag him and do the post. Probably find out more then."

Ryan nodded and went to start analyzing the evidence.

***

"So, heard you got some weird punk-type guy."

Ryan smiled at Calleigh in greeting. "Yeah. Take a look." He passed her the crime scene photos and they laid them out. "Dressed in some kind of leather coat thing that would be more appropriate in Canada. Tattoos all over his face. Some kind of scarring, maybe modifications from plastic surgery? Alexx will tell us more. And of course, the hair."

"Seems very punk."

"Yeah." Ryan looked back at the crime scene photos. "Something is off."

"What are you thinking?"

"I dunno. But something's not right." Ryan sighed, smiled. "What about your case?"

"Even more weird. Two unknown males, age approximately 90 years old on both, found on the beach just south of where you found your punk guy. We're running their DNA now."

"Seems pretty standard."

"I dunno," Calleigh answered. "I have the same instinct you do, that something about the case is off. I just don't know what yet."

***

"So what have we got, Mr Wolfe?" Horatio Caine asked.

"I dunno, H. This case just gets weirder and weirder. Look at these fibres." He showed them to Horatio under the scope. "They're almost square. Fibres, even synthetic ones, don't do that. But they're not plastic. And this material? It looks like leather, right?"

"It's not," Horatio surmised.

"Not even close."

"So what is it?"

"That's just it - there are no matches in any database. We've tried every database I could think of. Even some old books in hardcopy. Nothing."

They were looking at the varying pieces of clothing evidence when Ryan's phone rang.

"Wolfe."

"Ryan, you and Horatio had better get down here."

"We're on our way." Ryan turned to Horatio, "That was Alexx. She sounds a bit freaked." He led the way out of the lab. Alexx wasn't often phased by things she saw on her table.

***

Which turned out to be an understatement. She was standing on the other side of the room from the table. "Okay, you guys, maybe it's close to Halloween, but this isn't funny."

"What do you mean?" Horatio immediately went over to the table and looked at the victim. And saw why Alexx was standing waayyy over there. "Okay, someone is playing us." If there was one thing he wouldn't stand for, it was being used as a pawn in somebody's sick game or joke.

Ryan came over as well and also knew immediately why Alexx was nervous. "What would anyone gain by playing a joke like this?" 

The victim's organs were all in the wrong places. There were some organs that were odd shapes, and the blood looked... wrong. "Look here," said Horatio, opening the victim's mouth with one gloved hand.

"Whoa."

Alexx had come closer now. "The nearest thing I can think of to compare them to is shark teeth."

"And the facial deformities?" Ryan asked.

"They're not, are they?" Horatio guessed.

"No. They're perfectly symmetrical. The tattoos have been done with some kind of dye that I can't even get a sample of. It's like they're such a part of the skin that I can't get the dye to separate."

"Can you at least give me a cause of death?" Horatio asked, standing away from the table.

"Multiple gunshot wounds. Calleigh's looking at ballistics, but those bullets came from a P90."

"Heavy firepower," Ryan commented.

"Military issue," Horatio said.

"Wait, wait. Don't our guys carry M-16s or MP5s?"

"Some special units carry these. For what they do, they're a very efficient weapon."

Ryan ran his hand over his face. "So, look. Are we saying this is some guy with some sort of massive congenital defects? Or is someone playing some kind of joke? Because it's not funny."

"I have no idea." Horatio paused. "But we're gonna find out."

***

When he got back from processing the scene at the beach, Delko was the first one to call the P90 victim in the morgue "the alien". He looked at photos from the autopsy and said, "They look like the Alien Autopsy that aired on Fox in the late '90s."

So now the victim was "the alien". It was, "The alien died from multiple gunshot wounds." Or, "The alien's body temperature was below 50 degrees." Or, "The alien's clothing was made from alien materials."

They all got a good laugh out of it, except for Horatio, who seemed to think that the guy had indeed been an unfortunate person with multiple genetic defects. He simply called him "the victim."

The two beach victims' DNA didn't match anybody in the Florida database. Running a countrywide search would take much longer. Until Calleigh began to go through all the effects Delko had collected at the scene.

"A wallet."

"Yeah?"

"Well, it could give us something."

"It's not either of our dead guys," Delko said. "I already checked. This is a guy from Miami U."

Calleigh was scrutinizing the picture on his driver's license under the magnifying glass. "He has an overbite."

"And..."

"Well, this is going to seem strange, but one of our victims had an overbite."

"You're not seriously suggesting that our college student is one of the two victims in the morgue?"

"I'm not suggesting anything, Eric, I'm following the evidence." Calleigh gave him a bright smile as she left to investigate further.

She was only gone for half an hour when Delko was summoned to the morgue. "These men are not old," Alexx said.

"What do you mean?" Delko asked. "They look like they're one step ahead of the grim reaper, here."

"Exactly." Alexx handed him a vial. "There's some kind of toxin in the blood of both victims. Have it sent to Trace."

The blood was not red, or even dark. It was a weird, almost green, colour. "You're saying some toxin did this to them."

"I'm not saying anything, baby. Coming up with an explanation is your job."

***

Calleigh didn't find her Miami U. student, but she was lucky enough to get into his dorm room, as his roommate was nowhere to be found, either. Being young men, they had left DNA evidence all over the place, which made it easy to collect.

Two days after they had found the bodies, Ryan got around to examining the footprints found at the park. Various types, mostly military issue. But they didn't lead anywhere, and there seemed to be no trace evidence in any direction from the crime scene.

Everything about this screamed military, but if it was some kind of military operation, where were they?

He concentrated on the 'video game' they had found. "I first thought it was an iPod or some kind of mp3 player, but it's not. I used a laser to slice off a thin piece of the covering to see if I could get a handle on the materials it's made of, but..."

"Let me guess," said Eric. "No match." He turned the 'game' over in his hands. "What about turning it on?"

Ryan took it from him, pushing the screen randomly. "Nothing."

"Fingerprints?"

"Nada. There are some trace oils, but I think this device is engineered not to hold fingerprints."

"That doesn't seem possible," Eric said. "It looks just like plastic or a thin metal like they used on iPaqs."

"Nothing about this case makes any sense," Ryan agreed.

***

The next day, Calleigh got a positive match on three DNA samples. "Our morgue victims are definitely the missing Miami U. students. The DNA's a match," she told Horatio.

"Has Eric gotten any results on the toxin?"

"Not yet. So far it's taking a while to identify what it is. They've run it using three different methods."

"Thorough."

"Always," smiled Calleigh. "And last but not least, I got a match on the DNA from the candy wrapper."

"Is it our victim?" Horatio asked.

"No. The DNA belongs to a certain Doctor Rodney McKay. He's a Canadian national and an astrophysicist, but his file is classified under a U.S. Air Force seal."

Horatio just smiled that smile he used when he knew what was going to happen next - which he pretty much did.

"What?" asked Calleigh.

"Military issue. P90s. Military bootprints."

It didn't take much for her to see what he was getting at. Calleigh looked at Horatio, concerned. "We've stumbled into a classified operation."

"Exactly."

***

The results on the bloodwork came in, but once again nothing made sense. "It's actually two different substances," said Valera, having run DNA on the samples when nothing else seemed to yield results. "This one is some kind of unknown enzyme. If I had to hazard a guess going by its chemical structure, I'd say it has an effect on the body similar to PCP," she said, showing them a drawing of the molecule. "It's not synthetic, though."

"And the other one?" asked Horatio.

"Your guess is as good as mine. I introduced a little of it to a small cell culture and it shriveled up. I'd say it has some kind of ageing or dehydrating effect."

"Hmmm." This case just got weirder by the minute. "Keep me informed."

"Sure."

***

Because Horatio had that feeling, the one that had saved his life and his lab many times, he did not go home that night. If this was some kind of military operation, the military would be back. And he had to be ready to pounce and ask questions when they did come back.

It was late at night when he got a call from Detective Tripp. "Frank? Something urgent?"

"I'd say so, Horatio. There's a guy who looks like your victim down here, and half a dozen guys with automatic weapons."

"The military," Horatio surmised. He gripped his phone tighter. "Frank, we cannot let them kill him, you understand? Whatever the military is doing to these people, we can't let it continue. Not in Miami, not where innocent people might get harmed."

"I'll get some more backup down here."

"Good. I'm on my way."

By the time Horatio arrived at the scene, there were four police cars, two unmarked Miami-Dade cars and a black van, which was NOT one of theirs, parked randomly around a series of inter-connected warehouses.

"They're in there," Frank said. "Still chasing your second victim. They haven't responded to calls to come out and let us handle it."

"I'm going in," Horatio said, pulling on a flack jacket.

He didn't get far into the warehouse before a voice ordered him to stop. Horatio raised his hands, but kept his gun in his right hand. "I'm Horatio Caine, Miami-Dade Police."

"You need to get out of here NOW," came the voice again.

"Sorry, can't do that. I can't let you kill somebody else."

"Don't move," came the voice, and Horatio finally saw two men, both in the shadow of defensive positions, holding P90s on him. He'd only seen the picture of the astrophysicist for a few seconds, but he was almost 99% certain that Dr Rodney McKay was one of the men. The other was...

Horatio brought his gun up and aimed it at the second man. "Down on the ground now!" There was P90 fire from a position further in the warehouse, and some other whizzing sounds, but Horatio kept his gun and eyes trained on the man in front of him. "I'm a good shot," he said. "Get down on the ground, Mike."

McKay looked nonplussed. "Mike?" he asked, looking at the other man.

"Now."

"Colonel?" asked McKay.

"Fine," said the other man. Both men put down their weapons, but before Horatio could advance, he was hit by some kind of... energy... weapon. He saw a large, burly man with dreads advancing towards him before he passed out.

***

Horatio awoke three hours later, judging by the time on the clock in the lab. He was lying on a couch in the break room. His watch had stopped, and his phone was off and refusing to come on. But as soon as he got up, he was seen and Frank Tripp rushed over.

"Nice to have you back," Frank said. "You were right; it was the military. They ordered us out of there."

"What did they do to me?"

Tripp shook his head. "Don't know."

Just then, Calleigh came in. "Good to see you up, H."

Horatio smiled at her. "Where are we with the case?"

"They've ordered us to stand down. They've been vague, but I think they might be getting ready to tell us. They said they'll be in touch tomorrow."

"And the suspect?"

Both Calleigh and Frank looked confused. "Suspect?"

"The second man. McKay referred to him as 'Colonel' even though I'd swear in a court of law that I've met him before - remember the man who verbally abused his girlfriend? Mike something?"

They did remember. Horatio insisted on checking up on Mike. The man answered his phone on the third ring and agreed to come in the next day if necessary. But it wouldn't be - he also provided an alibi. He'd been at a casino in the 'Glades for two consecutive days. Yes, there was security footage. Horatio dispatched Ryan to collect it as for the first time in a very long time he felt genuinely fatigued.

The footage proved that Mike had not left the casino the entire time. But if his suspect wasn't Mike, who was it?

***

The very next morning, he had his answer when his suspects showed up. There were two of them. One was their astrophysicist, and the other was an Air Force colonel in his dress blues who was a dead ringer for Mike.

Horatio was totally polite and showed them into an interview room where he and Calleigh waited for the punchline.

"There, uh, aren't people... watching us, are there?" McKay asked.

"There aren't," Horatio said.

"Because there can't be. No recordings of any kind," said the colonel, who turned out to actually be a Lieutenant Colonel. That is, Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard. U.S. Air Force.

"You have my assurance."

"Is it here?" McKay asked.

"What?" asked Calleigh.

"The, uh..." began McKay, looking lost and turning to Sheppard.

"The weird looking bluish-green guy with the long hair and tattoos," Sheppard said.

"You mean the victim." Horatio said it softly and implacably.

"It had a victim?!" McKay squealed, sounding horrified, but Sheppard interrupted before he could say more.

"No, Rodney, he's referring to our, er, friend as the victim."

"Yes, I am." Horatio answered for himself.

"Oh, this is just perfect," McKay answered. "I suppose one of you yahoos called the media, too."

"And why would we do that?" Horatio's voice was getting harder and harder, but McKay seemed not to notice. Or if he did notice, he wasn't intimidated.

"Well, it's good if you didn't. This case cannot go any further. And I mean you have to lose the case file. The body and the lifesigns detector are coming with us."

"The body, as you call him," Horatio said, "stays in the morgue until we know what happened."

Sheppard *strolled* over to Horatio. "Okay, let me give this a shot. You found this guy somewhere in the open. Couldn't get an accurate temperature. Your M.E. found some weird anomalies when he cut him open. DNA doesn't come back to anything you can recognize. Fingerprints all wrong. Clothing you can't analyze. That about sum it up?"

"It does."

"That... person... is our enemy. Or was."

"He posed that much risk to the U.S.?"

"Not just the U.S.," McKay said. "He was a danger to every living person on Earth. If you won't turn over the body to us, then cremate it. Right now."

Horatio saw that McKay clearly believed what he was saying, which was worrying. Did they have some kind of time bomb in their morgue? "Is he carrying something?"

"Oh, you mean like a disease? No, not anything any of us could catch." McKay looked at Sheppard in frustration.

"Look, Lieutenant," Sheppard said. "We want to do this as quietly as possible. We could have your superiors order you to turn the body over the way they ordered you out of the warehouse, but this is a classified operation. We'd rather you just give it to us and forget this case ever landed in your lab."

"Somebody emptied an entire cartridge from a P90 into this man. No matter what may have been wrong with him, it's my job to find out who did it and why."

"Fine." McKay sighed loudly. "I killed it. Arrest me."

Both Horatio and Calleigh looked at him in disbelief.

McKay threw up his hands. "Did I or did I not shoot it?" he asked Sheppard.

"You did, Rodney. And he wasn't the first one you've shot."

"Probably won't be the last, either," Rodney said.

"True."

"Gentlemen." Horatio cut into the banter. "You're telling me this man was an enemy and he was killed during a military operation. This I get. But why did we find him lying in a park? Shell casings, boot prints everywhere."

"But not leading anywhere," Calleigh said.

Horatio just looked at her.

"It's one of the things that was bothering Ryan," she clarified. "The prints just stop."

"Fine," Rodney said to her. "Give me your hand."

"What?" asked Calleigh, even as McKay gently took her hand, in a way that let her know he wasn't trying to use force. That was the only thing that stopped her from pulling away and clocking him one.

"Rodney..." began Sheppard.

"Can you think of a quicker way, Colonel?"

"No, but..."

"Let's just get it over with, okay?"

"'Kay." Without asking - probably because he knew he'd get a 'no' - Sheppard grabbed Horatio by the shoulder. Horatio, on the verge of pulling away, felt instead a strange disconnect as a bright white light enveloped him.

***

He was standing... somewhere else. Thank goodness he still had his gun. He unholstered it and pointed it at Sheppard, who had just let go of him. "Hold it right there!" To his right he heard Calleigh gasp as she turned around, but he didn't move. Whatever these people had done to them, he hadn't consented to it, and they weren't going to get away with it.

But strangely, both Sheppard and McKay did what they were told. Although Sheppard undoubtedly had a gun, he didn't reach for it. "We're not going anywhere, Lieutenant," said Sheppard in a voice that Horatio recognized as used to giving orders. "But you might want to look out of the window."

As neither man seemed a threat, Horatio lowered his own gun and turned to look. "Where are we?"

"That should be obvious, Lieutenant," said Sheppard. "You're in orbit above Earth."

"How did you get us here?"

"Beaming," Sheppard said, grinning wickedly, as though he was enjoying Horatio's discomfort - or the discomfort that he thought Horatio was feeling, even though he wasn't showing any.

"Like in Star Trek?" Calleigh asked.

"A similar principle, yeah," McKay replied.

"This is the Earth ship Daedalus. It's an intergalactic warship designed for both hyperspace travel and combat," Sheppard said.

Horatio turned from the window and reholstered his gun. There was a time to be skeptical, but too much had gone on. Now was the time to find out just what *was* going on. "You'd better have one hell of an explanation lined up."

"We totally do," McKay said as they led the way out of the observation room to the conference room.

A slightly older man was waiting there with a nervous-looking woman and the big man with dreads Horatio had been before passing out in the warehouse. "I'm Colonel Steven Caldwell, commander of the Daedalus," the older man said, shaking hands with them both. "I believe you found the dead Wraith?" He didn't introduce the dreadlocked guy.

"Wraith?" asked Calleigh.

"The blue-green alien," supplied Sheppard.

"We did." Horatio paused. "But I'm going to need much more if I'm to accept that I must just turn him over to you. He was killed by a P90, which is military ordnance. And McKay over here confessed to doing it."

"Let's all sit down," Caldwell said.

Once they - except dreadlocked guy - were seated, Horatio leaned forward. "Start at the beginning and don't leave anything out."

The five looked at each other, but finally McKay began. "We're part of the Atlantis Expedition. Atlantis is an Ancient city located in another galaxy - the Pegasus Galaxy to be exact. The dominant race in Pegasus is the Wraith. They're an evolution from a creature called the Iratus bug. Somehow, human DNA got into this creature's makeup, and the Wraith are the result." McKay looked around, but no one seemed in the mood to contradict him - not even to point out that evolution didn't work that way as far as they knew. Boy, were some people in for a shock if the Stargate project ever went public!

"The Wraith feed on the life force of people in between periods of hibernation. We're not sure if it's some chemical they drain or what exactly they do - it would be impossible to figure it out without letting one feed while doing tests, which obviously we can't do - but they inject humans with an enzyme that makes them strong enough to live long enough while they drain a person's life."

McKay paused for breath and Sheppard jumped in. "Long story short - they're awake, they're hungry, and they know Earth is out here. We've fought them and won, but we're greatly outnumbered, although we've been making a dent in the number of hive ships out there."

"Hive ships?" Horatio asked.

"Huge vessels that they live in. They cocoon people like you'd store meat in your refrigerator, and when they're hungry they feed on them."

McKay added, "So, to them, Earth is going to seem like an all-you-can-eat buffet."

"They'll take your whole planet," said dreadlocked guy. "They took mine because we fought back."

Wait, Dreadlocks was ALSO an alien? Horatio stared at him, but the big man didn't back down. He just folded his arms and stared right back.

"But if they're from this... other galaxy," Calleigh said, sounding as though she expected to wake up any minute, "how did one make it to Miami?"

"They used an old trick - one clamped its ship onto the hull of the Daedalus and went into hibernation. We didn't even know the ship was there. We managed to shoot it out of the sky almost as soon as we detected it after it separated from the Daedalus, but the Wraith beamed onto the planet."

"And you followed and killed it," Horatio summed up.

"We used an Ancient lifesigns detector and beamed into the park." McKay snorted. "Can you believe the thing was lurking in the bushes waiting for prey!"

"So you killed it, ate a candy bar, and beamed back up."

"It was a power bar," McKay said. "I'm hypoglycemic."

"People were coming, and an approaching storm front at sea was affecting the sensors on the Daedalus. They could get a lock on us because we all have subcutaneous transponders, but the Wraith got left behind," Sheppard clarified.

"Lieutenant Caine," Caldwell interjected, "this is a highly classified, top secret project. The president knows about it. The Joint Chiefs know. Select members of the top military in dozens of countries know. But you must realise that mass panic could set in if this is revealed to the world at large prematurely."

"Oh, I understand," Horatio said. "You're asking us to participate in a government cover-up."

"Pretty much, yeah," McKay said.

"And you'll have to sign a non-disclosure agreement," Caldwell said.

"Done." Horatio looked over at Calleigh, who nodded as well.

"That's it?" Caldwell asked. "You make things difficult and now you just agree? Why does that not satisfy me?"

"Because: this will happen again. If you haven't told me everything, and of course you haven't," Horatio said, forestalling any interruptions, "I might be called to another crime scene where something like this has occurred." He paused to let it sink in. "I'm going to need a number and a contact person." Again, a pause, but before Caldwell could agree, Horatio went on. "And to be appraised of any further threats."

"I'm not sure we can do that," Sheppard said, looking at Caldwell, then at McKay.

"On a limited basis," Caldwell finally said. "Need to know."

"I'm going to need to know." It wasn't a request.

"You'll have to destroy any evidence that the Wraith wasn't human. DNA, blood, clothing."

"Can do."

"And," added McKay, giving him a small metallic sliver, "you'll have to plant this somewhere on the body."

"So you can - heh - 'beam' the body out of my morgue?" asked Horatio, grinning his scary grin.

"Exactly. We'll need the lifesigns detector back, too."

"Within the hour."

"Thank you," said Caldwell. "Now - "

But before he could say anything further, the alert sounded. "Captain to the bridge!"

"This is Caldwell. What's going on?"

"Sir, I believe we have a Wraith on board," came the reply.

"How is that possible?"

"Sir, all I know is, we found one of our crew - I think it's Sergeant Michaels - in the 302 bay, drained of life."

"Dammit!" Caldwell got halfway through the door, then seemed to remember his guests. "Keep them here until we're done."

Sheppard, nodding at McKay to stay, followed Caldwell along with Dreadlocks. But the woman remained behind with them. 

"How could one of these Wraith get aboard your ship?"

"I don't know," said McKay. "They have beaming technology, but until now we had no idea it could be used to beam *in* to places."

The woman spoke quietly. "Uh, maybe they didn't. All they'd have to do is get the dart through the magnetic shield."

Horatio addressed the woman, whose name tag didn't give a rank. It just said NOVAK in block letters. "Magnetic shield?"

"On the launch bay." At his uncomprehending look she added, "To keep the atmosphere in? In fact, that could very well be why we detected it. When it passed through the magnetic shield."

McKay's radio sprang to life. "Rodney."

"Go ahead."

"We need you up here now."

"On my way." McKay rushed out of the room, and Horatio saw no reason whatsoever not to follow.

McKay got into the elevator, and they followed. "How much damage could this thing do?" asked Calleigh.

"It knows we'll detect it. I'd guess it wants the specs to the hyperdrive, or if it thinks it can't escape, to conduct sabotage."

"How - " began Horatio, but before he could finish his question, the elevator door began opening.

McKay frowned. "This is the wrong deck. I have priority..." His speech was cut short when the doors opened fully and a grinning, blue-green face came into view.

One hand raised, it advanced, making a frightening hissing noise.

Horatio had his gun out before he even thought about it.

*Blam!* The Wraith hardly slowed down. *Blam!* *Blam!* Horatio emptied the entire clip into the alien, watching as it crumpled to the floor in slow motion, still flailing.

"Your gun!" McKay yelled at Calleigh.

"What?"

"Shoot it in the head! Do it now before it heals!"

Calleigh aimed and fired three times. The Wraith flailed for a few seconds more, and then was still. Calleigh stood over it, her gun still aimed at its head, looking paler than Horatio had seen her in a long while.

McKay was sagging against the back of the elevator. Finally, he touched his headset. "Colonel."

"Yeah?" came Sheppard's voice.

"Caine and the other one got the Wraith."

"On my way."

***

It was hard for the two CSIs to resist the urge to photograph and crime scene and collect samples, but this was a military operation and they were pushed aside.

"Thanks for your help, Lieutenant Caine," Caldwell said as they watched while the Wraith body was packed up and taken somewhere else. It was quite clearly a dismissal.

"No problem," said Horatio.

Calleigh just smiled her bright smile, and Horatio noticed how McKay turned red and looked anywhere but at her. Calleigh had that effect on people. He smirked slightly.

"Yeah, thanks," said Sheppard, joining them.

"As I said, no problem."

This time Calleigh did speak. "Glad we could help." She had noticed the scientist's reaction, because she smiled even more brightly and addressed him. "Doctor McKay, feel free to look us up if you're ever in Miami. You, too, Colonel. Colonel."

Sheppard gave her his winning smile. Caldwell's smile was paternal and slightly forced. McKay just sputtered, unable to say anything or even smile back.

"Now, if you could return us to - " Horatio stopped. "My office," he finally said.

"I'll take you," Novak said. "Follow me."

Horatio could feel the eyes of the Atlantis and Daedalus people on them until they were out of sight.

As Novak was telling them what to expect, Calleigh asked, "I don't suppose there are other - well, aliens - out here?"

"Yes, of course there are!" Novak said enthusiastically. "We have one on board. His name is Hermiod and he's an Asgard. They're our allies and..."

"Doctor Novak," Horatio interrupted.

"Um, yes?"

"We'd like to go home please."

"Oh. Of course," she added nervously, going over to some controls.

Horatio only had time for a brief acknowledgement before the white light and disconnectedness and they were back in Miami.

***

Calleigh made sure no one was around as Horatio opened the morgue drawer and pulled out the Wraith. "I wish we could have studied the DNA in more detail," she said.

"The Air Force probably has," Horatio said, opening the alien's mouth and slipping the transponder in. He placed the lifesigns detector on top of the body.

"It just felt wrong, disposing of evidence that way."

"Well, we have the results." Horatio slammed the door. "It's the evidence itself that has gone missing. No doubt it has just been mislabelled and will turn up sometime."

They heard a sound that sounded like a speeded-up 'whoosh' from the morgue drawer.

"Should we check?" Calleigh asked.

"No need," Horatio said, exiting the room.

They walked outside and looked across at the lights of Miami. They stood there for a very long time. Finally, Calleigh turned to him. "I don't know how you can be so calm about this. We... we left Earth. We were up there." She turned her face to the sky. "We killed an... an alien."

Horatio just nodded. "Eventful day," he said.

Calleigh threw up her hands. "How are we supposed to carry on now, knowing what we know?"

"We take it one day at a time," Horatio said, standing in that way he had that made people think he was posing for an invisible camera. "One day at a time."

END


End file.
